Hi, I’m Islay
Founder of Woven Wild
I’m a singer-songwriter, somatic facilitator, artist and highly sensitive person — but beyond that I am a woman on a mission to live a life in which I truly come alive, where my voice can be expressed, my heart can love wide open, and I can move through the world creating what I believe in.
I am passionate about supporting women in restoring a relationship to themselves in which they know that they are sacred. Over the course of centuries this knowing has been been violently erased from our bodies and it is time that we regenerate it.
It is from this perspective that I hold space for women to cultivate the capacity to live deeply rooted in their being, a skill and internal relationship that permits them to create lives they truly love to live.
The Woven Wild Origin Story
Woven Wild is the body of work that I have created after over ten years of study, travel, exploration, healing and personal liberation work. I moved through abusive relationships, emotional chaos, addiction, low self-worth and esteem, chronic pain, nervous system overwhelm and burnout, and the more I peeled back the layers of these symptoms, the more I realized that they all have origins in the culture and context that shaped me. I had been woven by ideas, beliefs, ways of being that I did not necessarily consent to or truly believe in.
In my devotion to healing myself I realized that the only way to truly find my way and know how to lead myself was to reconnect with nature — within and around me — as my guide. I had to weave myself wild.
As I excavated the stories within my own being, I started to notice these patterns over and over again in other women who, like me, were deeply intelligent, talented, creative, loving and had beautiful visions they longed to birth — yet were struggling so much to truly see themselves as sacred and inherently worthy. I kept thinking to myself that I needed to create a pathway to teach everything that I had learned to free myself because these symptoms are the result of historical trauma that needs to be loved into dissolution.
This is how The Woven Wild Method was born. It is a trauma-integrated, intersectional, deeply researched, and embodied approach to untangling the threads of history that live in our bodies, so that we can access healing, empowerment and liberation — from the roots.
What inspired Woven Wild
Collar de piedras chaquiras realizado por la tribu Embera de Colombia — photo source
The name came to me in 2020 during the pandemic, after spending many months in relative isolation from the world. I had been contemplating a fact that disturbed me: most of the work and ways of being that the “modern” world practices had been deemed non-essential.
I watched in the news as dolphins returned to the canals in Venice and our global pollution rates declined. I had always been rather critical of “the system” and have always saught my own path — because it really didn’t work for me — but this moment was a real catalyst in my determination to create a life that actually meant something to me.
While watching a video about the Embera Chamí indigenous community in Colombia, a woman explained that the patterns that they weave into their jewelry and art are intentional representations of their relationship with nature.
This felt incredibly contrasting to the western, globalized culture I exist in, where nature is seen as a place to go or something to use. In this culture, we have normalized deep disconnection and destruction of land and life and this is reflected in our industries — fast-fashion, non-renewable natural resource extraction, monoculture-based agriculture etc. — and this is destroying the health of all living beings on the planet.
I have always been moved by the injustice in the world, and finding that video was a reminder that there are other ways to exist on this planet, ways rooted in nature, held together in communities and relationships based in collective care.
Woven Wild has and continues to be a deep process of decolonization and unlearning that I am moving myself through daily. I am learning to inhabit myself harmoniously in relation with all living beings.
I work with sensitive creative women who often feel like there is something wrong with them and my mission is to remind them — there is nothing wrong with you, you are stuck in the systems you came here to change.
When we are able to reclaim sovereignty over our bodies, our minds, our energy, our hearts, we access our inherent creative power, giving us the capacity to create the lives — and worlds — we long for.
If this resonated, I would love to work with you!
Education & Training
I started my studies in traditional education systems, like most of us, but the approaches always felt lacking. Over the years I have shifted from traditional education frameworks to learning from intersectional healers, researchers and educators who value decolonization, regenerating relationship to land, and collective trauma healing through deep care. I am a devoted student of life, and am deeply passionate about my work, which is why my learning is ongoing. I have never felt like there was a single solution or approach to our very complex lives, which is why I’ve continuously strived to learn from a blend of perspectives. This has been my creative way of understanding how to access the depths of our human experience and cultivate it so that we can thrive.
I have had the honour and priviledge of learning from and sharing circles with wise women from around the world.
Warawara Neila Marquina has made a deep impact in my life. She is a medicine woman from Bolivia who shares Amawtismo, an indigenous cosmovision from the Andes. Her teachings remind women that we are in the return of the sacred feminine (tiempo del warmi pachakuti) and it is time for us to heal and free ourselves — all while in sacred relation with mother earth. Her teachings were the start of my own conscious return to the earth and my body as sacred territory to inhabit, cultivate and love.
I am a student of Mallorie Buoy, founder of Homebody Healing School of Somatics and the Brain Body Being method of somatic transformation. Her work completely changed my relationship to myself and my capacity to be in the world authentically.
I am eternally grateful to my first teacher Adi Shakti, for initiating me into the Akhanda Shakti yoga linneage and continuously reminding me to trust myself and embody my power.
200h Brain Body Being Facilitator and Somatic Embodiment Practitioner and Coach — Homebody Healing (2025)
130h Trauma-Sensitive Yin Yoga YTT — SoulWork (2021)
65h Trauma-Informed YTT — SoulWork (2021)
50h Yin YTT — Arhanta Yoga (2020)
85h Trauma-Sensitive Prenatal YTT — SoulWork (2020)
200h Trauma-Sensitive Hatha YTT — Passion Yoga School (2019)
B.A. Political Science & International Relations — Algoma University (2018)
A Northern girl at heart.
My roots & wings
I grew up in Wawa, Ontario Canada, on the shores of Lake Superior. I spent my childhood in the forest with my family, hunting, fishing, camping and adventuring. My mother is a very creative person, my dad is a writer whom I grew up listening to play guitar. As a child I took piano and guitar lessons and always loved to sing, but as I got older and took in more of the world and that is expected of girls and women, I disconnected from my voice and stopped singing.
In 2019 during the graduation ceremony from my 200 hour yoga teacher training, they asked us “what would you do if you could do anything?” and honestly my palms started to sweat and I felt very anxious because I didn’t know what to say. “Don’t I want to be a yoga teacher? I just dropped five grand on this training!” I noticed myself thinking anxiously.
When it finally came to my turn I started to say “if I could do anything I would…” and as I’m writing this I can feel the emotion forming in my throat. I felt my soul speak in that moment.
“Sing” — this was my answer to that question. In the moment I felt so surprised. It was a completely different direction from the path I had been walking — politics, social justice, yoga and consciousness. But it also felt completely true. This is what I really want to do.
In hindsight, I can see that having spent 3 weeks immersed in the jungles of Costa Rica with over 20 other amazing women, moving, breathing, laughing, crying, dancing, learning, meditating, resting, dreaming — clearing out the external world — my soul came back into my body after years of disconnection.
It was a momentary experience of blissful inner knowing that whispered “this way.” I have been devoted to cultivating a relationship with this voice ever since.
Trusting the medicine.
Following the calling of my heart has led me to write songs, perform on stages, connect with amazing musicians and record my first EP (to be released at some point in 2026).
And while these are very cool experiences and creations, what has been even more life-changing has been how this pursuit has healed and shaped me into the woman I am today.
There is deep medicine in turning inwards and learning the language of your soul. It is always speaking, we just need the capacity to listen.
I learned to trust the medicine of my soul’s calling and this is what I want to remind all women through my work — trust the medicine, it is leading you home to yourself.